That would be the best one yet, I thought. Here the knight sets out in shining armor and winds up with his armor severely tarnished and his lance broken and his teeth black and his beard itching murderously; and when he finally approaches the dragon’s lair, it develops that the tender maiden has a thing for dragons and wants to stay right where she is.

Beautiful-

Understand, these thoughts did not come all at once. They spaced themselves over the hours, and they were broken up with other interesting observations – that I was getting hungry, that I was tired, that the sky was darkening, that I was very hungry, that I was very tired, that Dhang had evidently disappeared, and, finally, that it was night.

And he still hadn’t come back.

The night was cold and dark and damp and gave every appearance of lasting forever. Clouds blotted out the moon and all the stars. I did not really have to remain hidden in the clump of brush. I would have been equally invisible in the middle of the road. It was that dark. After a while I decided that one did not have to be a paranoid to realize that Dhang was not returning for me. If the darkness had not been so utterly impenetrable, I might have tried going on after him, but as things stood, it was out of the question. I hefted the flashlight and clucked at it. At that moment I would have gladly traded it, gold and all, for a flashlight that worked.

There was nothing to do but wait for daylight or for Dhang, whichever appeared first. I curled up in the clump of brush and chewed betel and waited and hoped something would happen, and eventually something did.

It began to rain.

The rain didn’t last very long. This was fortunate; a steady downpour like that one would have flooded all of Southeast Asia if it had lasted an hour or so. As it was, it rained on me without interruption for perhaps fifteen minutes, at the conclusion of which time I was soaked through to the bone.

There was nothing to do but sit there like an idiot and get rained on. The ground on which I sat quietly turned itself into a sea of mud. The rain pelted my panung until I thought the poor garment would dissolve. There was no cover available, no place to go, no way to see where I was going if I tried. I stayed where I was and I got very wet, and finally, after a fifteen-minute version of eternity, the rain gave up.

I sat through the rest of the night, shivering, shaking, now and then rending the still night air with a sneeze. I waited for Dhang and for daybreak with the certain feeling that neither would ever arrive. There was nothing to eat. I had run out of betel nut. Everything that could possibly go wrong had already gone wrong, and if someone had come up and shot me, it would have been anti-climactic.

Chapter 9

When dawn broke, finally, I left my weapons and my canteen in the clump of brush and started down the road with the flashlight, a wet, feverish Diogenes with an inoperative lantern. I left the weapons behind because I was fairly certain they wouldn’t work anyway after all that rain and mud, and I left the canteen behind because I could not imagine ever wanting water again. I walked off down the road in the general direction of Tao Dan and I stopped at the first hut I saw.

It didn’t require any great courage to walk into the little shack. I decided that the worst that could happen was that I would get killed and I told myself reasonably that this was probably also the best thing that could happen. I went inside. An old man sat in a chair that someone had fashioned from an empty oil drum. He was smoking a pipe. He looked wordlessly at me, his eyes saying that he had seen all manner of strangeness in his time, that I admittedly was one of the stranger phenomena to which he had been subjected, but that it would take more than a wet, bearded maniac to rattle his composure.

“I must wash myself and remove my beard,” I said. “I require dry clothing. And food. I have not eaten in many hours and must have food.”

He merely looked at me.

“I am hungry,” I said. I made pantomime motions, one hand clutching an invisible rice bowl, the other shoveling food into my mouth. “Food, a shave, clothing-”

“You are not of this country.”

“No, I am not.”

“Parlez-vous français?”

“Oui, je parle français-”

And off we went in French. I don’t suppose I should have been surprised. French influence had been considerable in Indochina since 1787, and the French had held the area as a protectorate for many years before Dienbienphu. Still, I had been talking and thinking in nothing but Siamese and Khmer of late, and the sudden transition to an Occidental language was jarring. The old man spoke reasonably good French and seemed delighted at the chance to show it off.

“For years I worked for the French,” he said. “I was a very valuable man for them. I was chief overseer on a large rubber plantation. They knew that I possessed the ability to keep the native laborers in line. I was well paid and performed my work with skill and diligence.” He turned sad eyes on the mud-floored hut. “And look at me now,” he said. “At what I have come to.”

“These are bad times,” I said.

“They are. That a man like myself should not be respected in my old age. The Communists and anarchists run wild throughout the country. Ah, bad times, eh?”

I thought to myself that the old man was lucky to be alive at all. After all the years he had spent serving the French colonial interests, it was incredible that he hadn’t been killed after the liberation, even more extraordinary that he was allowed to remain alive in Pathet Lao territory. Yet it was undeniable that his present life was a great comedown from earlier prosperity. The hut contained a straw pallet in one corner, a kerosene stove, a few pots and pans, the oil drum chair, and very little else.

“You are French, my boy?”

“Yes.” My head was reeling. I am whatever you want me to be, I thought. Feed me, clothe me, let me sit by the side of the stove, and I will be any nationality you prefer.

“From Paris?”

“That is correct.”

“What district? Saint-Germain-des-Prés? Montmartre? Montparnasse? Ah, you are surprised at my knowledge of Paris, are you not? And I will tell you something that will further astonish you. I have never been to the beautiful France. It has been my dream, but I have never been there. I live and die in this wilderness.” He shook his head. “Once this devastation was a part of France, a part of the French empire. Once it was on the road to dignity, to civilization, to life itself. Now!”

I said, “Perhaps one day-”

Gallic fire burned in his wrinkled brown face. “Ah! I can see it now as I have so often seen it in my dreams. Mon Général Charles de Gaulle leading battalions of French troops through all of Indochina, recovering lost territory, bringing my poor country back under the protection of the French flag! And at his side those other brave soldiers of the beautiful France…” – and he named two generals who had been implicated in an OAS plot to assassinate De Gaulle.

“Perhaps that day will come, old one.”

“That I may live to see it,” he said fervently. “That I may live to see my poor country take her place among the lands of the French Empire, side by side with France herself, and with Algeria, and Senegal, and French Equatorial Africa, and Quebec-”

I stiffened at attention. I began, thin of voice and oddly lightheaded, to sing the “Marseillaise.” “‘Allons, enfants de la patrie – - ’”

He jumped to his feet. “‘Le jour de gloire est arrivée,’” he sang out loud and clear, his hand over his heart.

“To share with you my rice bowl and my razor, that is my pleasure,” the old man was saying. “But clothing is another matter. My own would not fit you, and I have no other. Perhaps it would be possible to dry your garment by the fire…”